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Wednesday 2 May 2018

On the real differences between the minds of men and women by J McGrigor Allan

http://www.jstor.org/tc/accept?origin=/stable/pdf/3025361.pdf


ON FEMININE BEAUTY DISARMING MASCULINE AGGRESSION

"The beauty so liberally lavished on the female form (while it results directly from the adaptation of her structure to her special sexual functions,) is manifestly intended to charm and allure man so as to bring these functions into operation. Her indescribable graces, and the accomplishments of which her sex is exclusively susceptible, take captive her fierce conqueror, neutralising the otherwise disastrous consequences which might result from the weakness of woman, and the mere brutal strength of man. While woman yields in appearance, she disarms her would-be tyrant, and the weaker establishes a real and permanent supremacy over the stronger sex; not less real and permanent that it is continually and effectually disguised!"


IS THE SUPERIORITY OF MALE PHYSICAL STRENGTH OVER THE FEMALE THE REASON THEY CONTROL RESOURCES?

"Our sex, it is said, has used its only superior faculty, muscular strength, to trample upon woman? To deprive her of her rights? To treat her as a slave. This is the sort of stuff that goes down with mixed audiences, even in so-called semi-scientific societies. If government depend solely on superiority in physical strength, why is man the lord of creation? Why are we not ruled by lions, tigers, bulls, bears, elephants, and whales? Why does the gorilla still lurk in the forests of equatorial Africa, and not put in his claim to settle the affairs of Spain, or sit in Mr Gladstone's cabinet?"


THE SUPERIOR DISSIMULATION OF THE FEMALE SEX

" ... the profession of all others for which woman seems specially adapted is that of an actress! For this pursuit woman is qualified by natural instinct, and by that second nature, habit. Subjected all her life to a being mentally and physically stronger than herself, whose taste she must consult and whom she must study to please, striving continually to attain her ends by indirect means; to have her own way when she appears most willing to yield; to govern him whom she has solemnly sworn to obey, woman becomes gradually an adept in dissimulation. All women are more or less actresses! Shakespeare has, indeed, told us that we are all, men and women, players on the great stage of the world. It must be confessed that if we regard acting in this universal sense, man is here surpassed by woman. I admit that in the art of disguising her sentiments, passively appearing to be what she is not, and of actively personating the very opposite of what she really is, woman is far superior to man! Take lying, for instance : the worst of men often falters at telling a deliberate untruth ; if he does lie, he does it in such a clumsy way as to show that he is ashamed of the unmanly vice, and he is easily detected. I have heard a lady urge as a proof of men's stupidity, that they did not know how to dissimulate like women. I give this as evidence that the generality of women are perfectly aware, and derive a secret satisfaction from the conviction, that they circumvent men by cunning and deception, although they strenuously deny the fact. Their superiority in this respect is well expressed by Byron:

Now what I love in woman is, they won't
Or can't do otherwise than lie, but do it
So well, the very truth seems falsehood to it."


WOMEN AND JUSTICE

"Women are utterly deficient in the highest quality of the human mind? Justice I They never see two sides of a question : a woman makes a firm friend, an unrelenting enemy. In a lawsuit I should like for my advocate "a sweet girl-graduate with golden hair," who might gain my cause by making an impression on an intelligent British jury. But imagine a strong-minded female on the bench, summing up in a case of divorce, or in any case where the rights of the sexes were at variance ! Law would, indeed, have new terrors but I shall not pursue a subject which is too serious for a jest."


HOW FEMINISM LEADS TO TRANSGENDERISM

"As for some androgynists raving about woman's mission, intellectual equality, and moral superiority of woman, etc, it is quite evident that under the battle-cry of mental equality of the sexes, they are contending really for empire for themselves. They do not want to be treated on an equality with man. They desire the masculine in addition to the feminine privileges a man's liberty added to a woman's non-responsibility! They demand the rights of a citizen, knowing they cannot be called on to discharge a citizen's duties. They claim every privilege of man, while refusing to surrender a single privilege conceded to them as women! At the very instant that such a logical female declares herself the equal of man, she would resent as ungentlemanly, unmanly, cowardly, the attempt of any man to take her at her word, and treat her in every respect like one of his own sex. She is a stickler for all the courtesies and conventional amenities, which the stronger observes towards the weaker sex as a matter of course, and which depend solely on the inequality of the sexes, thus screaming in the same breath equality and inferiority! The masculine woman, when she thinks anything is to be got, cries out, "I am man's equal!" "There is no distinction between the sexes!" Indeed ! then turn out from the chimney-corner, lounge no longer on sofa or ottoman, but away into the world, and take your share, lady, in the rough work of men without fear or favour. Hear a lady, sheltered from cradle to grave, from all the storms which beat on the bare heads of millions of both sexes; housed, fed, clothed in luxury, zealously guarded from any unpleasant contact with the stern realities of life; hear such a lady regretting that she does not enjoy man's privileges! Let her disguise herself in man's apparel and learn what these privileges are. How glad she would be to return to her own costume ! The masculine woman takes good care to entrench herself in all the feminine outworks of propriety, civility, attention, gallantry, deference, and those still more solid exactions demanded by the sex in right of its weakness, and cheerfully paid by all gentlemen to all gentlewomen, who know how to make their sex respected. The nondescript androgynous creatures illustrate the fable of the jackdaw in peacock's feathers.

They want to usurp our sexual advantages without surrendering their own, and necessarily fail to achieve such an impossible combination. They want to be both men and women, and they are consequently neither the one nor the other."

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